Grant: Alliance Grants

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) has huge potential to detect incipient structural failures in various components, e.g., the onset of fatigue damage, corrosion, spalling and delamination in the structures during their service life so that preventive measures can be undertaken in a timely manner. This has prompted several public and private infrastructure owners to employ SHM strategies on many of their existing critical systems. St. Clair Region Conservation Authority (SCRCA), the industry partner of this project, has felt an immediate need for real-time monitoring of W. Darcy McKeough Floodway, one of the flood control dams that has been subjected to fluctuating operational conditions, adverse weather and climate change over many years. In fact, the McKeough dam is very close to the end of its service life, and it is important to detect incipient damage or unexpected changes so that any major breakdown can be avoided to save the local community from floods. The main objective of this project is to develop a revolutionary automated diagnostic system for remote inspection of concrete dams by harnessing next-generation sensors. This Alliance project will evaluate internal damage progression using acoustic sensing, whereas the external damage will be monitored and localized using innovative drone-based mapping and artificial intelligence (AI). The novelty of this project is to leverage the capabilities of advanced sensing technology and AI to automate data acquisition and diagnostics for the dam infrastructure with limited available data. The outcome of this project will lead to an increased life span for aging dam infrastructure, thereby reducing the need for its demolition and for new construction. The project will also create smart, fault-tolerant, and fast asset management systems that will enable net-zero CO2 emissions, substantial cost savings, and, most importantly, reductions in human effort and erroneous fault maintenance processes for infrastructure owners, leading to safer, sustainable, and environmentally friendly water distribution management for our society and meeting the demand of Canada's rapidly growing population.